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The 10 Most Important LinkedIn Talent Product Updates of 2018

December 3, 2018

This year has probably been the most demanding in your career in terms of in finding, attracting and retaining top talent. The talent market is competitive and recruiters and talent leaders have had to be even more thoughtful about their talent brand strategy, establish an efficient hiring process and be driven by a data-savvy mindset.

In order to help ,we have been enhancing our products so you can plan your talent strategy with real-time data, find and attract the right candidates more easily, and save time with seamlessly integrated recruiting tools.

Check out the list below to see 10 key updates we developed to power you through 2018 (and maybe play a part in making 2019 your most successful yet):

Our recently launched LinkedIn Talent Insights product provides you access to real-time supply and demand data on the global (and local) talent landscape. This gives you the competitive advantage to instantly see trends and movements and plan accordingly. Leveraging this data and insights enables you to make better informed decisions on how to grow your business, build your talent strategy, enter new markets and more.

2. Tell your story using LinkedIn Carousel & Video Ads

Now you can use Carousel & Video Ad formats for Sponsored Updates to create an even more engaging experience with prospects who may not have been exposed to your brand, driving them to your job opportunities or Career Page. The new ad formats give you the unique opportunity to bring your employer brand story to life in an engaging way that is visually compelling, directly in the LinkedIn feed.

We’ve launched 3 enhancements to LinkedIn Jobs to increase the quality of applications you receive. Firstly, we’ve overhauled our matching algorithm to learn and prioritize the factors that matter most to recruiters as part of our new Jobs Targeting. Secondly, new custom targeting capabilities in the job posting flow enable you to precisely determine who sees your role. And thirdly, you can now see how compatible applicants are in one glance, based on the job posting criteria, while candidates have a chance to compare their profile to the requirements before applying.

4. Engage and connect with candidates with the new LinkedIn Pages Design

The new Pages Design makes it easier for job seekers to come directly to you by surfacing content in a more interactive, intuitive way, creating a more engaging candidate experience. Job seekers can also set job alerts for your company and receive notifications as soon as you post a job. Based on our research, job seekers who ask for alerts are highly engaged, which is why you can now filter these active candidates within LinkedIn Recruiter for more efficient sourcing. Learn more here.

5. Reach out to candidates who are more likely to respond with Open Candidates

The Open Candidates Feature in Recruiter allows you to see which candidates have indicated that they are open to a new opportunity and prioritise outreach to those. Saved searches now also include a list of open candidates so you can act quickly. To drive a quality experience and high response rates, LinkedIn now reminds open candidates that aren’t responsive or have recently changed their job to update their "open to new opportunities" settings.

6. Improve your workflow and make it easier to search for your ideal candidates with Integrated Search in Recruiter

We have made several updates to LinkedIn Recruiter, including the Integrated Search Workflow. This makes recruiters more efficient by aligning the search function and talent pipeline in one place. You can now easily switch between your ideal talent pool search and pipeline for each project, and pick up a search right where you left off. To learn more click here.

7. Get smarter, customised results through Integrated Search

Within each integrated search project in Recruiter, we are asking you to build your ideal pipeline. With a single click you can easily save great candidates to projects but also hide candidates that are not a good fit. Coming soon, LinkedIn will leverage these insights around what kind of candidates you and your team are looking for to make smarter, AI driven recommendations across your LinkedIn product portfolio.

8. Find candidates in specific locations more easily with the Location Search Improvement in Recruiter

The Recruiter Location Search Improvement allows you to search in the exact location you want to recruit. We updated our location data with millions of places and are now enabling you to search by postal code, city, region, state, and province levels. This creates more accurate and reliable location searches, allowing you to find the right candidates even quicker and easier.

9. Get valuable time back with the Integration between LinkedIn Recruiter and your ATS

Recruiter System Connect helps increase your efficiency and effectiveness by integrating the two tools you spend your time in - your ATS and LinkedIn Recruiter. This integration allows data to flow between the ATS and LinkedIn Recruiter saving time by eliminating switching between systems and ensuring accuracy across systems. No longer will you overlook a past ATS applicant who, when doing a search on Recruiter, is now an ideal fit for your current open role.

10. Create a more transparent and efficient recruiting process by informing job seekers with salary and commute time insights

To ensure an effective and efficient recruiting process, we are constantly improving the job seeker experience, resulting in all time high engagement on LinkedIn. We launched Salary insights on jobs to create more transparency for the job seeker which in turn allows customers to set salary expectations up front, creating a more efficient hiring process. Similarly, job seekers can now view their potential commute time to a job before they even apply, helping you get more interested candidates.

2018 brought some exciting updates for the talent landscape of planning, attracting and hiring great talent.

In a sneak-peak into 2019, we'll be continuing on this data and insights driven journey with new ways to leverage talent media, a re-imagination of how recruiter and jobs work smarter together, and exciting enhancements for jobs. See you next year!